Titles are hard. Also sorry, tl;dr here :x
This piece took a damn long time, worked on a little at a time over several months, been meaning to post for a while now. I'm very proud of it, and it's very important to me. I will try to explain a little of why.

Every year for the past few, I've tried to do at least one big personal painting, to challenge myself, work on improvement, and capture a little of my headstuff.

The last year has been very good for me, in the department of happiness and spiritual and emotional growth and healing. Part of the reasons for this are captured in this piece.

The deer as a symbol (spirit animal, I guess) has become very important to me in the last year or so, and become a big part of my life.

Coincidentally, a specific buck has also become a very good friend and important part of my life, so his appearance in this pic is dual-meaning.

The pic as a whole! This Memorial Day,   Akerin and I went on a Yellowstone adventure. I think about that place a lot, and while I've been there before, this time felt different somehow. Deeper, more of a connection. I didn't want to leave. I look at the photos all the time, and I want to go back! I hope to do so again soon. It is an amazing place, and no two visits are alike. I tried to capture just a little of that experience here, using those photos as reference.

This was also supposed to be a birthday gift for the aforementioned buck, albeit a very late one. XD

There's so much more, but that's the big parts. :B

Thanks go to  Vantid and  Rah-bop for their help with shading stuff, and to Wolf-nymph simply for being so awesome at fur that I was able to use her work as ref/help.